UK grocery market recovers ever so slightly

The British grocery market grew by 0.1% in the 12-week period ending December 7th, a report by Kantar Worldpanel informed on Tuesday, following the historic first ever recorded decline in the previous period.

The report said shoppers are adding marginally more into their baskets compared to the same 12-week period in 2013.

“Britain’s supermarket price war is ramping up ahead of the all-important Christmas period. Retailers are selling more items on promotion, leading to like-for-like prices falling by 0.7% compared with this time last year.”

“Cheaper groceries are an early Christmas present for shoppers, saving them £182 million in the past 12 weeks alone, but this puts pressure on the supermarkets. We expect grocery deflation to continue well into 2015 as the price war rumbles on.”

Lidl and Aldi, the two German discount supermarket chains, hit a record combined market share of 8.6% during the 12-week period, which was 1.5 percentage points higher than last year.

Aldi’s sales grew by 22.3%, and those of Lidl by 18.3%.

Mr. McKevitt says consumers are the winners in this holiday season.

Waitrose, which historically has always done well in the festive season, continued performing well. Sales increased by 6% during the 12-week period. The supermarket chain has posted successive quarters of growth since February 2009.

Asda saw sales fall by -1%, bringing its market share down to 16.7%. However, it recorded the best performance among the big four supermarkets.

Tesco registered a -2.7% decline, which was its least bad result since June 2014. Analysts see Tesco’s latest figures as a sign of possibly some stabilization.